I know this feature has been requested before (macros/actions), but it's not quite there yet for my needs. With the 1.5 update, Affinity Photo does have a basic macro recording function now, but it still does not eliminate the need for Photoshop from my workflow until I can assign custom keyboard shortcuts to the macros for rapid playback! I've been very impressed with Affinity Photo so far, and I really want to see it become a "Photoshop Killer"! I work in entertainment press photography, and we typically edit around 100-200 photos a night from an average movie premiere/event, or up to 1000 photos from a major awards show. We work at a rapid pace and on very tight deadlines, so speed is critical.
My typical workflow in Photoshop ...
- I need to be able to eyeball every single photo in a set and make rapid corrections with a series of keyboard shortcuts. Batch processing might work for some jobs, but looking at every single photo to make adjustments quickly is also frequently needed.
- I usually open 200 photos in Photoshop at a time (Photoshop's limit) in a cascading stack, then do corrections to levels, sharpness, and maybe slight color correction if needed.
- Save/close the file as JPEG 8, 300dpi at 3000x2000 px (Saved while closing the file with COMMAND-W on Mac)
- Repeat until I'm done with all 200, and then work on an addition 200 files if needed
- Then caption all the photos with the name of the person/people using Photo Mechanic
What I would love to see in Affinity Photo is the same rapid editing ability that Photoshop has.
For example, I would love to be able to assign a keyboard shortcut to macros/actions that do something like the following:
CTRL-SHIFT-F1 - Auto Brightness/Contrast
CTRL-SHIFT-F2 - Brighten 10%
CTRL-SHIFT-F3 - Brighten 20%
CTRL-SHIFT-F4 - Auto Color Temp
CTRL-SHIFT-F5 - De-Orange
CTRL-SHIFT-F6 - De-Blue
CTRL-SHIFT-F7 - Auto Sharpen
CTRL-SHIFT-F8 - Sharpen 10%
CTRL-SHIFT-F9 - Sharpen 20%
CTRL-ALT-L - Last Used Level Adjustment
CTRL-ALT-C - Last Used Color Correction
CTRL-ALT-U - Last Used Sharpness Adjustment
I think you get the idea :-)
Another feature I would love to see is IPTC data creation/editing (or even basic awareness, passthrough). It's not an absolute must for me, since I use Photo Mechanic, which does an amazing job. However, I would not like to have a situation pop up where maybe I need to go back and do a quick edit to a file that has already been captioned in Photo Mechanic, but Affinity Photo doesn't save the existing IPTC data that's already in the file (ie. strips that info out). That would be "no bueno"!
Thanks for listening!

If I want to move an object down or up in the hierarchy of the Layers panel I can use CTRL+[ or ]. But what if I want to move it out of a group/symbol/layer? The only way is to use the "release" action, right? Is there a "release" action keyboard shortcut?

With the new release of AF macro in AF photo, I think it would be really cool to have an ability to convert Photoshop actions to affinity ones. I don't know how you would do this, and I don't know if its even possible, but hey, its just a request :D